ABSTRACT
The French Revolution began, in the words of poet William Wordsworth, as a “blissful dawn.” But the events set in motion by the storming of Paris’s Bastille prison on July 14, 1789 soon gave way to factionalism, tyranny, and bloodshed. Hopes of transforming society and ending poverty faded. Europe fell to authoritarian rule and Napoleon’s imperial ambition, but the people were now partially leading the way. This chapter begins by examining the new language of sentiment popularized by Laurence Sterne and Jean-Jacques Rousseau that surfaced in abolitionist demands to end the slave trade. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley invoked revolutionary hopes of creating a “new man.” But the creature also became a means to register disquiet with democratic mobilization in addition to sympathy with the poor, destitute, and enslaved. The chapter concludes with the “second-generation” Romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley and the halting worldwide progress of democratic movements. This fuller global picture, the chapter argues, complicates the focus on events in France, pointing to alternative revolutionary currents (and deepening imperial control) in the wider Atlantic world. Year 1789 nonetheless marks a watershed, exemplified by the chorus of the 1980s musical Les Misérables: “Do you hear the people sing?”
